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In principle, all of these features represent the spatial
potential of the respective terrain, which may be exploited
and enhanced by landscape architecture, but also interpreted
idiosyncratically. Through modest, isolated interventions,
key locations and spatial features may be exposed and la-
tent structures allowed to emerge, so that the character of
a > place becomes more distinctive. Individual architectural
structures may allow special features of the landscape to be
taken up and clarified, the topography of a terrain empha-
sized through insertions or additions, or the introduction
of contrasts. Routes and streets are resources for leading
through the landscape in such a way that their typical fea-
tures are spread out before the gaze and transmitted through
movement, an example being the motorway planning of Al-
win Seifert. A special case is the (English) landscape garden,
which painstakingly reshapes the terrain both horticulturally
and topographically in order to heighten the naturalness of
its appearance. In the process, the landscape becomes a park
or > garden.
If town planning is regarded as landscape architecture,
the design of the city profits from the landscape features and
their distinctiveness. While schematic cities laid out on grids
seem interchangeable, and the diffuse ‘in-between’ city must
combat facelessness, a location along the river or bay, on a
summit or in a valley, may endow an entire locality or town
with an unmistakable identity.Layering is an elementary procedure in building. Another
instrument of architectural stratification is the stacking of
rooms on various > levels. In masonry, the horizontal stack-
ing of stone strata illustrates the process of building a wall via
layering; here, the layering of masses expresses heaviness and
pressure, endowing the structure with stability. In the length-
wise and transverse layering of beams in construction, we see
the elementary > tectonics by which a room is roofed. TheLayering